The Government may have the best policy, the best strategy and the best method, but without an effective implementation, it will never acheive its target.
You may have a good policy, strategy or method, but without a good team to implement it, there will be no success.
Title: The success and failure of Technology Roadmapping initiatives: perceptions of participating managers.
Abstract
Purpose:
The issue of effective technology management is becoming increasingly important and critical in delivering competitive advantage to companies today. The effective management of technology requires appropriate methods or systems such as Technology Roadmapping (TRM), which can support the development and implementation of integrated strategic business, product and technology plans. As a result, there is a growing use of TRM by many firms in Malaysian. However, not all TRM initiatives result in technology roadmaps being adopted and used to manage the technology. This research aims to investigate the success and failure of TRM initiatives and it has the following objectives: (1) to explore differences between companies that implement TRM and those that did not, (2) to investigate main drivers and perceived factors that block implementation, (3) to identify implementation problems of the detail process of TRM, and (4) to test the application of a refined TRM in a practical setting.
Design/methodology/approach:
The research was conducted in three main stages. Initial pilot case studies were conducted to explore differences between companies that implement TRM and those that did not as well as to investigate main drivers and perceived factors that block implementation. Then, an in-depth case study was conducted to identify implementation problems of the detail process of TRM in a firm that has successfully used TRM for a relatively long period of time in its technology planning process. Finally, a field test using action research was carried out in a company with their managers’ direct involvement in order to test the application of a refined TRM in a practical setting.
Findings:
Many issues and challenges of applying technology roadmapping were identified and discussed and a gap is identified within the existing TRM process.
One of the major findings of implementation problems is that many companies had stopped using the process after having tried it for just once and the reasons are related to the process itself (it is difficult to fit the process into the current strategic planning system for technology). In addition, it is difficult to keep the record up-to-date on an ongoing basis due to time consuming and perceived unimportant of the process. It is difficult to understand the terms used and follow the process, and rely heavily on outside expert to guide the whole implementation process. Managers have no previous experiences, lack of confident, lack of skills and knowledge, etc. A knowledge gap exist which caused many misinterpretation and confusion. A detail report is produced from this research about all grievances, comments and perceptions from managers.
The full value of TRM process can only be realized if it is used continuously and the information is kept current. This requires a feature that can build-in the process into the organization’s daily operating system. A careful consideration to add this feature is important to ensure the process could integrate with other parts of the organization, compliment with other systems, and work well under a specific environmental context, e.g. culture, in order for it to be used on an ongoing basis. In this sense, it was believed that the ‘soft’ aspect management is especially important but was neglected by the existing TRM process. This is because the existing TRM process is facilitated by a ‘prescript’ and ‘hard’ approach. The process needs to be integrated with the ‘soft’ aspects of management. A new method is proposed and it has incorporated ‘soft’ aspect of management in order to make it a better approach.
Relevance/contribution:
The findings from this research are of interest of many TRM initiatives. This research is relevant because the findings provide useful guidelines for managers to implement TRM in future. The implications of the findings to both theory and practice are discussed in this paper.
Many issues and limitations were raised in this paper about the implementation problems with the existing and proposed TRM. The proposed method may not be able to solve all of the problems however a few managers believe that it could reduce obstacles, commit resources, and reward improvement. These are the necessary steps to fully realize the benefits of the method and bring the method forward. In the academic community, such a method could invite debate from many contrasting views. For industrialists, only benefits over its cost can justify such a method. Therefore, further research is needed to test the wider applicability of the proposed method.
